


afterward of hush

by duchamp



Category: DCU, Wonder Woman (2017), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-11 15:11:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11151015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duchamp/pseuds/duchamp
Summary: Her shield stands as guard, as watch. An artifact and a keepsake and a memoriam to warriors who’ve come before; if the cantos passed as fiction are to be believed. Which, Steve thinks, after all he’s seen, with the woman in his arms, they are.





	afterward of hush

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She tells her stories. We tell her ours. We all clean our teeth  
with what is sharp. She asks, _Will you add this_  
_story to your stories of history & land & peace?_  
Yes, we will add this story. We ask her,  
_Will you add these poems to your repertoire of songs_  
_about hunger & thirst & fur?_ & she, being wiser than we,  
says, _Yes, I will sing them if_  
_you grant me your permission_  
_to turn them into poems about_  
_a mercy._

ARACELIS GIRMAY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

she and i

 

There are golden slants angling their way across her skin. From the firelight, from the town’s streetlamps down below, from the shadows cast by her braces; she’d taken them off previously, said, “It’s a gesture of faith.” And isn’t that funny, a woman from myth and legend, from stories of old, who’s saved more lives in the span of hours than Steve’s managed to do in his entire career as a soldier and as a spy, who knows he lies for a living, wanted to demonstrate a surrender—to him and for him.

He rubs the skin where those bracelets, where those emblems of legacy and battle and stature, are usually clasped. It’s strikingly pale there. And Steve wonders when this area of Diana has seen the sun, if ever. The thought that she might have removed that precious metal for him alone is an overwhelming weight. (And probably an unwarranted one, he chastises himself. He’s far from a first for her.) “I feel like I’m back in the eighth grade and tripping over myself,” he admits, honestly falling out of him like water from a sieve.

Diana smiles, cheek on his shoulder. But even as she does her brow furrows, and Steve knows this is his cue to explain. It’s oddly calming, rambling on about mundanities as if he’s an open textbook on the day to day life of man. “We go to places here,” he starts, “to learn things. Schools. It’s where we keep many of our books. And they’re teachers for every subject—history, math, literature, you name it. And it’s numbered by, ah, years. Like one year you have first grade, and the next second grade, and so on. It goes all the way up to twelve. And then there’s university—”

“What’s un-iv-er-si-ty?” Diana breaks the word up into small, staccato chunks. Enunciating them just so.

“Um, sort of where the students who did well with their studies during all the other years go. But it’s not just whether you’re smart or hardworking or not. Some can’t get in because it costs so much.”

“In currency?” She’s been becoming accustomed to human give and take, what for the clothes and the ice cream.

Steve tries not to think about those things. About the normality and… sweetness of them. Best to cut the cord, not let the sentiment rest too long. It has no place here. What they’re doing now has no place here. They’re wasting time, minutes slipping past, pennies down a well, submerged, he should be scoping out the strategy for tomorrow, he should be—“Yes,” he answers.

Lips pursing, heat in her voice, a true hint of disbelief, she goes, so earnestly, “Why would you bar someone from a place of learning, if they really desired to go, because they couldn’t pay?”

“That’s a good question,” Steve admits. He could tell her about the economy. About capitalism. About the food chain and everyone’s place in it. “I don’t know.”

“Did you ever go?”

“I did.” He runs his fingers through her hair. Black, silken thread. Thinks of her elation when she saw snow for the first time, when those white crumbs dusted the strands on top of her head. He kisses her crown. Twice. Just for the simple sake of doing it. “I was lucky.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

brought home

 

“Holding a weapon for me it’s…” Diana’s lilt is honeyed and longing. She pauses, and Steve can see her traversing various ways of continuing to explain this to him. “Amazons, we’re taught to treat whatever object we hold as an extension of ourselves. A plant, a cup, a shoe, what we use to fight—all the same. Battle is another part of my nature.” Breath on his chest, she traces a birthmark with her tongue. Quick, exploratory for the briefest second, then settles back against the pillows. Looks up to the ceiling. A sigh. “My mother, though, she didn’t want me to learn those ways, in the beginning.”

“Her way of protecting you.”

Diana nods. “She wanted so badly to be my shield. And she was.” She gestures to the space in front of them, the jut of brick by the fireplace. Complimented by a cherry wood rocker, her defense propped in its cradle. “And now I have mine sitting in that chair there.”

Hand going forward, moving up Diana’s left clavicle. Steve shifts to his side, mouth to latch as a barnacle at the dip between her neck and collarbone. Counting beats by how she yelps; laughs when he uses his teeth in a playful bite. “Well, it’s quite well presented,” he says. A kiss to her jawline, after—“You can see the shadows,” then, “How they land on the plating,” and, “The dips and crevices,” finishing, a husk for a voice, “Looks like a painting.”

Her shield stands as guard, as watch. An artifact and a keepsake and a memoriam to warriors who’ve come before; if the cantos passed as fiction are to be believed. Which, Steve thinks, after all he’s seen, with the woman in his arms, they are.

 

 

 

 

 

 

keep ourselves

 

It’s a relief, felt through every limb, when she presses him down. Rocks with him, her heft barely constricting, giving him space to move; to even switch positions if he wanted, to flip her under him. (He doesn’t. He wouldn’t. This is what he wants.) It’s dizzying, to think how much Diana is holding herself back.

Flush, space nonexistent between their bodies, she measures her mouth against his own. Barely a kiss, more a wet mess than anything. They’re both breathing heavy. And this is when the words find their way to the surface, when he’s flung out and more than slightly out of his mind, not only telling her she’s beautiful, how much he wants her, but describing a new, faint faith in something more, saying, “I think I can see the end of this, now. A better—” (World? Future? He has no future, he knows this. The point is that, with her, his world does.)

He doesn’t finish the sentence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

awake

 

The morning starts with her back pressed alongside his front, a line of heat, sleeping and still as a sunken stone. Seeing the sun already out, squeezing her shoulder, he murmurs, “Diana.”

She lets out a huff, slow with her response. “Yes?” She turns in his arms, blinks up at him.

He shuts his eyes. “We have to go.”

**Author's Note:**

> Written because apparently there was some Discourse™ over whether or not Diana and Steve did the dirty or just talked all night—to which I was like… BUT THEY DID BOTH, OK. So, voilà. 
> 
> Find me on [Tumblr](http://highsmith.tumblr.com/).


End file.
